This is where a character disassembles a weapon, cleans it and puts it back together. It comes in a number of varieties:

The character is undercover as an arms dealer and it's a test to see if they know their firearms by assembling a pistol. They may have to do it blindfolded.

The ability to strip and re-assemble a weapon blindfolded is regarded in Hollywood as a display of massive competence and familiarity. In real life it just takes a little practice and isn't all that difficult.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

After being revived from a millennia-long sleep, Santana from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure picks up a gun, remarks how he's never seen a tool like this before, and takes it apart perfectly in seconds. Being a highly intelligent ancient superbeing certainly has its advantages.

Seen as part of a flashback in the first episode of Gunslinger Girl, where Henrietta spends an entire night disassembling and reassembling her pistol so that she can become familiar with how it works. Also happens at various other points with less focus.

The protagonists of Noir clean their guns regularly. In the first episode Kirika does this while talking to Mireille (with her eyes closed) and reveals that due to her amnesia she has no idea where or how she learned to do this.

Axel Brodie does this to his gun/Duel Disk in an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.

Riza Hawkeye of Fullmetal Alchemist cleans a blood-covered gun that was returned to her by Edward Elric.

Several characters do this in Phantom of Inferno. In fact, it was Cal quickly stripping and reassembling Reiji's rifle by instict and experimentation that tipped him off to the fact that she's actually a genius prodigy.

Lupin III's gunmen, Lupin and Jigen, are occasionally shown to do this. Jigen most often. One scene that shows the personalities of the cast is where Lupin is flipping through random tv channels while slouching, Jigen is cleaning his gun, and Goemon is polishing his blade, while Fujiko walks in wearing a new dress.

After kidnapping "Headhunter's Daughter", in Lupin III: Dead or Alive, the crew are back at one of their hideouts, and Lupin can be seen cleaning his Walther, making sure it's ready for action.

Comic Books

In V for Vendetta, Fingerman Derek Almond cleans his gun with such fetishistic attention that he bullies his wife and he forgot to load his gun when he called to a sighting of V. He pays the price for that.

During the Vietnam War, the first M-16's were giving American soldiers nightmares for their tendency to foul and jam at the worst possible moments in combat. When the US military finally faced reality about the problem, they ordered a redesign and in the meantime rushed as many cleaning kits as they could to the soldiers along with a comic book by Will Eisner to inform them of the need to regularly maintain the weapon and how.

In Layer Cake, Gene does this for the benefit of XXXX. He claims to do it blindfolded sometimes as a form of meditation.

In the Jackie Chan movie New Police Story, this comes up multiple times as a form of contest with one of the villains. Pretty much every time it happens it's for someones life.

This happens in Wild Target when assassin Victor Maynard is trying to teach Tony the tricks of the trade. Surprisingly Tony manages to put the gun together... but only to have it fly apart when he picks it up.

Wax in From Paris with Love can strip a gun in the hands of someone else, while it's being pointed at him. He's that good. He also bypasses customs by transporting a stripped Mrs. Jones in energy-drink cans.

Wah Sing Ku of Lethal Weapon 4, one of Jet Li's few villain roles, can also do this, as demonstrated on Riggs' Beretta in that infamous scene.

In Scent of a Woman, Lt. Col. Frank Slade demonstrates this skill for Charlies Simms. In this case, Slade doesn't have to perform his feat blindfolded because he's already completely blind.

In one episode of Alias, Sydney witnesses a group of young children practicing assembling a pistol. It's clearly inferred that she did something similar in her past. You see, Daddy worked for the CIA...

NCIS. In "Under Covers" Ziva mentions she cleans her weapon every day, even when it hasn't been fired.

In Burn Notice Fiona has to do this to prove her skills when pretending to be a kidnapper. Her response is to ask if she has to do it blindfolded. Team Westen is also occasionally shown doing this for normal maintenance purposes, as in the penultimate episode of season 1.

An early episode of Nikita has the latest batch of Division recruits, including Alex, being assigned to reassemble a stripped sub-machine gun blindfolded. They then have to strip them back down.

Two different episodes of Firefly show Jayne and Mal, respectively, stripping and cleaning their various firearms on the dining room table (leading to a CMOF when Inara walks in on Mal and startles him). Jayne is also shown honing a combat knife.

Quantum Leap: Sam doesn't know how to field-strip an M-16. But he's leaped into Lee Harvey Oswald, who does.

Parodied in Community season 3 episode 6, when Troy and other Air Conditioning Repair School candidates race against each other, blindfolded, to repair broken A/C units.

Nolan in Defiance performs the combat version of the strip when a racist mine owner is about to shoot an alien boy dead. He reaches up and pulls out the weapon's slide before it can fire.

Haven: a character with Fake Memories has a disassembled gun on the table in front of her. When she sees someone being threatened, she automatically reassembles the gun and shoots without hesitation. This convinces her that there's something wrong with her memories, since her current persona shouldn't have those skills.

The Blacklist: In "The Good Samaritan Killer," Reddington lays out an M1911 on a table, and informs a hacker that field stripping and reassembly will take about two minutes, and he had better transfer 500 million dollars in by the time Reddington's done.

Luther. A pistol has been left at a murder scene to frame Luther, so he rubs it with a cloth in an attempt to remove his traces from the weapon. Alice Morgan rolls her eyes at his ineptness, takes the pistol off Luther and does a more thorough job.

In a late 3rd Rock from the Sun episode, Sally shows off her military skills by disassembling then reassembling a gun in front of her boyfriend, a police officer. He responds by saying "Any time I've taken my gun apart, I had to buy a new gun."

In The Flash (2014), Captain Cold regularly takes apart and inspects his freeze ray. As a result, he knows how to repair it and he's memorized all the parts, so he can instantly tell if it has been sabotaged. At Cold's urging, his partner Heat Wave has started to do the same with his flamethrower.

Literature

In the Deathlands series, the companions' armorer, J.B. Dix, not only constantly strips and cleans his multitude of weapons, but he does it up to five times in sequence and can tell at a single moment's notice when a gun is starting to wear and what exactly is wrong. And to top it all off, he knows by name almost every single make, model, and caliber of gun in circulation in Deathlands, as well as length of both gun and barrel, date of manufacture, and all specs by memory. Every other character does this regularly as well. Given thenature of The Deathlands, it's quite literally a matter of life and death at any given time.

The Bourne Identity. The doctor who rescues Bourne, having taken note of the amnesiac's old scars, gives him an automatic pistol and tells him to "break it down." Much to Bourne's surprise, he knows exactly how to do so.

In The Dresden Files, Harry's friends do this, as does the protagonist himself on occasion. Justified, as their friendship with Harry often means they have to use those guns on a more regular basis than is entirely fair.

At one point, when two Knights of the Cross and two members of the Order of St. Giles are cleaning their weapons, Harry labels them all weapon nuts, directly calling out the gun nuts and then immediately noticing the Knights cleaning their swords.

In The Man Who Killed His Brother, Mick Axbrewder pops the cylinder out of a .38 revolver as if it were a magazine in a semi-auto.

In March Upcountry, Julian sets up a betting pool on his ability to strip a plasma rifle in 7 seconds.

Feng Shui has a Gun Schtick called "Dismantle Gun" that allows gunmen to pull that Jet Li move from Lethal Weapon 4 on another guy's gun, using their Guns skill in place of Martial Arts. The Neat Freak gun schtick, which reduces the time needed to clear a jam, implies someone who does this quite regularly and otherwise knows how to take care of their guns.

Poetry

Henry Reed's 1944 poem The Naming of Parts is about the never-ending training British army recruits underwent in identifying the parts, stripping down, cleaning and re-assembling their weapons. (See Real Life, below). The poem's narrator is more interested in reminders of the peacetime world, such as flowers blooming around the barracks, whose lives are not regimented.

In Fallout: New Vegas, Caesar claims to have helped a tribe to victory by teaching them how to strip and clean guns. Joshua "Burned Man" Graham also does this continuously in his conversations, to the point that it makes people wonder where he got all of those handguns.

An iPad app allows people to do this virtually with a variety of weapons.

It's now available as a free-to-play game on Steam, World of Guns: Gun Disassembly.

In thisThe Whiteboard strip Doc manages to field strip Jinx's marker* technical term for a [[Paintball Episode paintball gun before he even finishes saying "Let's have a look" between the first two frames, leaving a bewildered Jinx wondering how Doc managed it.

An episode of Hercules The Animated Series had Adonis, Icarus, and Hercules doing Spartan training, and part of the regime was to assemble a crossbow blindfolded.

An episode of The Venture Bros. has Sgt. Hatred try and teach Dean the Blindfolded method. It takes him a few hours, the trigger is in the muzzle, and he somehow managed to build the blindfold into the gun.

Web Original

Parodied in "Video Game High School" in which two dueling parties have to reassemble broken down partial keyboards.

Real Life

Stripping a gun for cleaning is a necessary part of maintaining any firearm. If you shoot it, you will at some point need to swab the barrel, oil certain contact points, and perform various other maintenance tasks. This isn't necessarily limited to just the firearm- it is usually cheaper to replace a magazine spring or follower than to replace the magazine outright. Failure to maintain a firearm can lead to poor accuracy, improper function, and even damage to the gun.

In boot camp, you will be given a rifle around week 3. You will not be given so much as a single bullet until three weeks later. The intervening period is spent breaking it down, reassembling it, and breaking it down again. Rinse and repeat until you're ready to shove the bolt carrier up the Master Corporal's nose.

Being able to disassemble and/or clean a weapon while blindfolded is not just for show; apart from the fact that there will be situations where turning a light on while you field-strip and clean your weapon will attract unwanted attention, a soldier who is visually incapacitated (eye damage, sand in eyes from a desert theater, etc) can still be useful to his squadmates by unjamming or performing maintenance on their weapons while they focus on the enemy. Thus some military forces actually teach that skill.

Gun safety instructors are careful to remind their disciples they don't need to fully disassemble a gun, just separate bolt, barrel, stock for cleaning (in case of handguns: slide, barrel, mainspring) and they would better leave the more complex parts of the action like the trigger and hammer mechanism to the professional gunsmiths. They might have seen some people whose triggers went off when the gun was pointed where it shouldn't be.

And also not to drown the parts in oil, which can cause it to collect dirt or sand and cause a jam.

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